Special Issue "Characterization and Strategies to Preserve Local Poultry Breeds"
A special issue of Animals (ISSN 2076-2615). This special issue belongs to the section "Poultry".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: 31 December 2021.
Special Issue Editors
Interests: poultry nutrition; local poultry breed; poultry meat quality
Interests: local poultry breeds; poultry semen cryopreservation; poultry reproduction
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
The Food and Agricultural Organization of United Nations (FAO) promotes the conservation of animal genetic resources with economic potential and scientific and cultural interest. Local poultry populations are usually well adapted to the environment and capable of expressing optimal functionality of life cycle events as reproduction and resistance/resilience to diseases despite environmental challenges and climate change. Currently, the conservation of avian genetic resources is part of the institutional activity in many public research centers to contrast the threat of extinction, and both the in situ and ex situ techniques are implemented.
We invite original research papers that address the conservation of local poultry breeds (chickens, turkeys, ducks, goose, guinea fowl, quails, pigeons, game birds) and consider the abovementioned issues related to genetic characterization, reproduction, production systems, egg and meat quality, resistance to diseases, market, sociocultural and environmental aspects, and their interactions.
Prof. Achille Schiavone
Prof. Silvia Cerolini
Guest Editors
Manuscript Submission Information
Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All papers will be peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.
Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Animals is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.
Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.
Planned Papers
The below list represents only planned manuscripts. Some of these manuscripts have not been received by the Editorial Office yet. Papers submitted to MDPI journals are subject to peer-review.
Title: Genetic characterization of a unique local chicken breed of Russian Korolyok in comparison with other chicken dwarf breeds
Authors: Natalia Dementieva; Anatoli B. Vakhrameev; Yuri S. Shcherbakov; Grigori K. Peglivanian; Marina V. Pozovnikova; Anna A. Krutikova; Ekaterina A. Polteva; Artem P. Dysin; Inessa A. Meftah; Olga V. Mitrofanova; Darren K. Griffin; Michael N. Romanov
Affiliation: 1 Russian Research Institute of Farm Animal Genetics and Breeding – Branch of the L. K. Ernst Federal Science Center for Animal Husbandry, Pushkin, St. Petersburg, Russia
2 School of Biosciences, University of Kent, Canterbury, Kent, UK
Abstract: Assessing genetic diversity in various local poultry breeds is instrumental for their conserving as genetic resources, identifying specific genetic features of these breeds, and exploring history of their genetic divergence. Methodological advantages in analyzing genome-wide genotyping results using SNP chip technology make it possible to determine the genetic diversity of rare chicken breeds. These are usually carriers of peculiar phenotypic traits, such as adaptation to local conditions, resistance to certain diseases, unique performance features, and ornamental and other non-ordinary characters. One of the rare Russian chicken breeds is Korolyok translated from Russian as “kinglet”. These Russian dwarf chickens were already mentioned in the first Russian book on poultry published in 1774. For more than 50 years, most of the Korolyok population has been maintained in the genetic collection of rare and endangered chicken breeds (RRIFAGB, Pushkin, St. Petersburg, Russia). Here, we report for the first time genetic characterization of this unique local breed in comparison with two other chicken dwarf breeds.
Having a low effective population size both (25 and 3200 generations ago), rare breeds, at a certain stage of breeding, came from a limited number of ancestors or were under strong selection pressure over many generations. In this study, we estimated values of inbreeding, heterozygosity, linkage disequilibrium (LD), runs of homozygosity (ROH) level, and effective population size. Using these indicators, we characterized genetic diversity within the following dwarf breeds: Korolyok, Cochin Bantam (CB), and Hamburg Silver Spangled Dwarf (HSSD), and found elevated inbreeding rates in their genomes. High inbreeding values and low heterozygosity may be due to temporal fluctuations in the size of these populations. A large proportion of homozygous regions in the genome of individuals was revealed in HSSD, although an increased ROH level was also observed in the Korolyok and CB. The presence of a large number of SNP markers possessing LD can be explained by a limited size of the populations studied or a small number of efficiently mating sires within a population. LD values in the studied breeds were high in HSSD and Korolyok. A small population size of these breeds, as well as a decline in their reproduction rates, may be indicative of a risk of possible inbreeding increase in their future generations.